growing up in a good ol' Kiwi Campground

“Weekly” Challenge 21: Drinks (again!)

The Engineer and I have decided not to buy any toys for The Engineer’s Baby (well, at least not many…) She has quite a few already, and for Christmas she received some homemade toys from her Grandma, which she absolutely loved. That inspired us to look for things in our cupboards, reuse random things, and make toys, rather than buying more.

(This is pretty easy while we live in Brunei and don’t really have easy access to good toy shops. It would be a lot harder to achieve other places – there are so many amazing toys out there!)

Our most recent toy making was some sensory bottles. But in order to make sensory bottles, we had to buy some bottles. And to buy bottles, we had to buy some drinks. So, rather than just buying water bottles, as was my initial plan, we decided to have a bit of fun and make a challenge of it. We’ve tried drinks before, but the variety in the drinks aisle left plenty more to choose from.

We went to the supermarket, and picked a selection out. Our choices were partly based on bottle size, and partly on what looked interesting. (If we were to choose again, we would also have chosen based on ease of label removal, but hey, you live and learn…) In the end, we had two fruitamin drinks, two aloe vera drinks, and some cooling water.

We ran along the line, starting with the pink fruitamin thing. The flavour was tropical punch or something, and I wasn’t expecting much (I’m not usually a fan of tropical…)

The Engineer tried first, and his first comment was “it has chunks…” Which, indeed it did. As do many drinks in Asia. Before we came here, I hated chunks in my drinks. But I have to say, I’ve become rather used to them, and sometimes even enjoy them. But despite the chunks and the tropical flavour, we agreed this one was pretty good.

Next up was the grape aloe vera. Grape is a flavour I dig, so I was excited about this one. But as soon as I took the lid off, I knew my excitement was misplaced. This was not just grape, it was extreme fake-grape. My first comment on tasting it was not “it has chunks…” (though it did), but “you are going to HATE this!” (Because while I am a fan of grape flavour, The Engineer cannot get behind it in even its mildest forms. And this was far from mild)

My face in this photo kinda sums up the drink (shockingly sweet, overpoweringly fake, only good for tipping down the sink…)

Next up was the cooling water. To be fair, we knew this would pretty much just taste like water (which it did). But the bottle was a PERFECT size, and it was worth buying just to read the label, which claims that it should be used to “quench thirst and give a cooling effect in body heatiness”. I know that this comes from Traditional Chinese Medicine, and probably doesn’t sound crazy in Chinese, but we found the English translation a little comical. The Engineer thinks he is rather comical, and put on some silly moves for the camera. (Because really, this tasting was pretty boring!)

After that, it was just more of the same, but in different flavours. We were not surprised to discover that the pomegranate aloe vera was infinitely nicer than the grape version.

But we were quite surprised to find that the lemon fruitamin was significantly less nice than the tropical punch version (we are usually fans of lemon drinks, but this was too intense, and way too sweet. Plus the chunks just didn’t go as well!)

So at the end of it all, we had confirmed that Asia loves chunky drinks, and that we should never ever buy grape aloe vera again. But more importantly, we had some empty bottles (okay, okay, some tipping down the sink was involved) with which to make some toys for The Engineer’s Baby. I think she approved of our first two (glitter and sequins in one, red sago in the other).